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\f0\b\fs24 \cf2 Trump Administration Releases Report Finding\
\'91No Convincing Alternative Explanation\'92 for Climate Change
\b0 \
by Chris Mooney, Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis, with Jason Samenow\
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\cf2 Nov. 3, 2017 \'96 The Trump administration released a\'a0dire\'a0scientific report\'a0Friday. It called human activity the dominant driver of global warming. That conclusion is at odds with White House decisions to withdraw from a key international climate accord, champion fossil fuels, and reverse Obama-era climate policies.\
To the surprise of some scientists, the White House did not seek to prevent the release of the government\'92s National Climate Assessment, which is mandated by law.\'a0 The report affirms that climate change is driven almost entirely by human action, warns of a worst-case scenario where seas could rise as high as 8 feet by the year 2100, and details climate-related damage across the United States that is already unfolding as a result of an average global temperature increase of 1.8\'b0 Fahrenheit since 1900.\
\'93It is extremely likely that human\'a0influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,\'94 the document reports. \'93For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation\'a0supported by the extent of the observational evidence.\'94\
The report\'92s release underscores the extent to which the machinery of the federal scientific establishment, operating in multiple agencies across the government, continues to grind on, even as top administration officials have minimized or disparaged its findings. Federal scientists have continued to author papers and issue reports on climate change, for example, even as political appointees have altered the wording of news releases or blocked civil servants from speaking about their conclusions in public forums. The\'a0climate assessment process is dictated by a 1990 law that Democratic and Republican administrations have\'a0followed.\
The White House on Friday sought to downplay the significance of the study and its findings. \'93The climate has changed and is always changing. As the Climate Science Special Report states, the magnitude of future climate change depends significantly on \'91remaining uncertainty in the sensitivity of Earth\'92s climate to [greenhouse gas, GHG] emissions,'\'94\'a0White House spokesman\'a0Raj Shah said in a statement. \'93In the United States, energy related carbon dioxide emissions have been declining, are expected to remain flat through 2040, and will also continue to decline as a share of world emissions.\'94\
Shah added that the Trump administration \'93supports rigorous scientific analysis and debate.\'94 He said it will continue to \'93promote access to the affordable and reliable energy needed to grow economically\'94 and to back advancements that improve infrastructure and ultimately reduce emissions.\
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and President Trump have all questioned\'a0the extent of humans\'92 contribution to climate change.\'a0 One of the EPA\'92s Web pages posted scientific conclusions similar to those in the new report until earlier this year, when\'a0Pruitt\'92s deputies ordered it removed.\
The report comes as Trump and members of his Cabinet are working to promote U.S. fossil-fuel production and repeal several federal rules aimed at curbing the nation\'92s carbon output. Those include ones limiting\'a0GHG emissions from existing power plants, oil and gas operations on federal land, and carbon emissions from\'a0cars and trucks. Trump has also announced\'a0he will exit the Paris climate agreement, under which the United States has pledged to cut its overall GHG emissions by 26% to 28%, compared\'a0with 2005 levels by 2025.\
The report\'a0could have considerable legal and policy significance, providing new and stronger support for the EPA\'92s GHG \'93endangerment finding\'94 under the Clean Air Act, which lays the foundation for regulations on emissions.\
\'93This is a federal government report whose contents completely undercut their policies, completely undercut the statements made by senior members of the administration,\'94 said Phil Duffy, director of the Woods Hole Research Center.\
The government is\'a0required\'a0to produce the national assessment every 4 years. This time, the report is split into 2 documents, one that lays out the fundamental science of climate change and the other that shows how the United States is being affected on a regional basis. Combined, the 2 documents total over 2,000 pages.\
The 1st document, called the Climate Science Special Report, is a finalized report, having been peer-reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences and vetted by experts across government agencies. It was formally unveiled Friday.\
\'93I think this report is basically the most comprehensive climate science report in the world right now,\'94 said Robert Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers who is an expert on sea-level rise and served as one of the report\'92s lead authors.\
It affirms that the United States is already experiencing more extreme heat and rainfall events and more large wildfires in the West, that more than 25 coastal U.S. cities are already experiencing more flooding, and that seas could rise by 1 to 4 feet by the year 2100, and perhaps even more than that, if Antarctica proves to be unstable, as is feared. The report says that a rise of over 8 feet is \'93physically possible\'94 with high levels of GHG emissions, but that there\'92s no way right now to\'a0predict how likely it is to happen.\
When it comes to rapidly escalating levels of GHGs in the atmosphere, the report states, \'93there is no climate analog for this century at any time in at least the last 50 million years.\'94\
Most striking, perhaps, the report warns of the unpredictable \'97 changes that scientists cannot foresee that could involve tipping points or fast changes in the climate system. These could switch the climate into \'93new states that are very different from those experienced in the recent past.\'94\
Some\'a0members of the scientific community had speculated that the administration might refuse to publish the report or might alter its conclusions. During the George W. Bush administration, a senior official at the White House Council on Environmental Quality edited aspects of some government science reports.\
Yet multiple\'a0experts, as well as some administration officials and federal scientists, said Trump political appointees did not change the special report\'92s scientific conclusions.\'a0 While some edits have been made to its final version \'97 for instance, omitting or softening some references to the Paris climate agreement \'97 those were focused on policy.\
\'93I\'92m quite confident to say there has been no political interference in the scientific messages from this report,\'94\'a0David Fahey, an atmospheric scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a lead author of the study, told reporters on Friday. \'a0\'93Whatever fears we had weren\'92t realized.\'85 This report says what the scientists want it to say.\'94\
A senior administration official, who asked for anonymity because the process is still underway, said in an interview that top Trump officials decided to put out the assessment without changing the findings of its contributors, even if some appointees may have different views.\
Glynis Lough, who is deputy director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists and had served as chief of staff for the National Climate Assessment at the U.S. Global Change Research Program until mid-2016, said in an interview, that the changes made by government officials to the latest report \'93are consistent with the types of changes that were made in the previous administration for the 2014 National Climate Assessment, to avoid policy prescriptiveness.\'94\
Perhaps no agency under Trump has tried to downplay and undermine climate science more than the EPA. Most recently, political appointees at the EPA instructed 2 agency scientists and 1 contractor not to speak as planned at a\'a0scientific conference\'a0in Rhode Island. The conference marked the culmination of a 3-year report on the status of Narragansett Bay, New England\'92s largest estuary, in which climate change featured prominently.\
The EPA also has altered parts of its website containing detailed climate data and scientific information. As part of that overhaul,\'a0in April the agency took down pages that had existed for years. They contained a wealth of information on the scientific causes of global warming, its consequences, and ways for communities to mitigate or adapt. The agency said that it was simply making changes to better reflect the new administration\'92s priorities, and that any pages taken down would be archived.\
Pruitt has repeatedly advocated for the creation of a government-wide \'93red team/blue team\'94 exercise, in which a group of outside critics would challenge the validity of mainstream scientific conclusions around climate change.\
Other departments have also removed climate-change documents online. The Interior Department\'92s Bureau of Land Management, for example,\'a0no longer provides access\'a0to\'a0documents assessing\'a0the danger that future warming poses to deserts in the Southwest.\
When U.S. Geological Survey scientists, working with international researchers, published\'a0an article in the journal
\i Nature
\i0 \'a0evaluating how climate change and human population growth would affect where rain-fed agriculture could thrive, the USGS published a\'a0news release\'a0that omitted the words \'93climate change\'94 altogether.\
The Agriculture Department\'92s\'a0climate hubs, however, remain freely available online. Researchers at the U.S. Forest Service\'a0have continued to publish papers this year\'a0on how climate change is affecting wildfires, wetlands, and\'a0aquatic habitat across the country.\
The climate science report is already\'a0coming under fire from some of the administration\'92s allies. The day before it was published, Steven Koonin, a New York University physicist who has met with Pruitt and advocated for the \'93red team/blue team\'94 exercise,\'a0preemptively criticized\'a0the document in the
\i Wall Street Journal
\i0 , calling it \'93deceptive.\'94\
Koonin argued that the report \'93ominously notes that,\'a0while global sea level rose an average 0.05 inch a year during\'a0most of\'a0the 20th century, it has risen at about twice that rate since 1993. But\'a0it fails to mention that the rate fluctuated by comparable amounts\'a0several times during the 20th century.\'94\
But one of the report\'92s authors suggested Koonin is creating a straw man. \'93The report does not state that the rate since 1993 is the fastest than during any comparable period since 1900 (though in my informal assessment, it likely is), which is the non-statement Steve seems to be objecting to,\'94 Kopp countered by email.\
Still, the line of criticism could be amplified by\'a0conservatives in the coming days. Joseph Bast, the chief executive of the Heartland Institute, a think tank that has long challenged many aspects of the science of global warming, also strongly critiqued the report in a statement to The
\i Washington Post
\i0 Friday. \'93This is typical Obama-era political science,\'94 Bast said. \'93It\'92s all been debunked so many times, it\'92s not worth debating anymore. Why are we still wasting taxpayer dollars on green propaganda?\'94\
The administration\'a0also released, in draft form,\'a0the 2nd volume\'a0of the National Climate Assessment, which looks at regional impacts across the United States. This document is available for public comment. It will begin a peer review process, with final publication expected in late 2018.\
Already, however, it is possible to discern some of what it will conclude. For instance, a peer-reviewed\'a0EPA technical document,\'a0released to inform the Assessment, finds that the monetary costs of climate change in the United States could be dramatic.\
That document, dubbed the
\i Climate Change Impacts and Risk Analysis
\i0 , finds that high temperatures could lead to the loss per year of \'93almost 1.9 billion labor hours across the national workforce\'94 by 2090. That would mean $160 billion annually in lost income to workers.\
With high levels of warming, coastal property damage in 2090 could total $120 billion annually, and deaths from temperature extremes could reach 9,300 per year, or in monetized terms, $140 billion annually in damage. Additional 10s of billions annually could occur in the form of damage to roads, rail lines and electrical infrastructure, the report finds.\
This could all be lessened considerably, the report notes, if warming is held to lower levels.\
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\cf2 www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/11/03/trump-administration-releases-report-finds-no-convincing-alternative-explanation-for-climate-change/?undefined=&utm_term=.de27b53c2285&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1}